Carolyn Doty -- fiction writer and professor

Heidi Benson, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, March 29, 2003

Novelist Carolyn H. Doty, who was the director of the fiction program of the Squaw Valley Writers Conference and lived in the Bay Area for years, died March 10 of a heart attack at her home in Lawrence, Kan. She was 62.

Ms. Doty, who was a professor of English at the University of Kansas, wrote four novels -- "Fly Away Home" (1982), "A Day Later" (1980), "Whisper" (1992) and "What She Told Him" (1985). Also, her many reviews and essays appeared in the Paris Review, the Los Angeles Times and other publications.

"She managed to peer into corners of human behavior that other people overlooked," said author and National Public Radio book critic Allen Cheuse, who worked with Ms. Doty at Squaw on several occasions. "She had real joie de vivre."

Born Carolyn House in Bingham, Utah, on July 28, 1941, Ms. Doty graduated from the University of Utah and married "Bill" Everett Doty in 1963. After the birth of their son, Stuart, that year, the family moved to Berkeley, where a daughter, Margaret, was born in 1967.

Ms. Doty began a career in writing and teaching in 1977, the same year she separated from her husband. She attended San Francisco State as a graduate student but left when she was accepted to the creative writing program at UC Irvine, where she earned a master of fine arts degree in 1979. It was at Irvine that she met San Francisco novelist Oakley Hall, who was the director of Irvine's creative writing program and co-founder of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, an intensive summer writing program taught by accomplished authors.

When Ms. Doty came back to the Bay Area in 1980 to teach creative writing at San Francisco State, she also joined the Squaw Valley staff, directing its fiction writing program until 2000. She left the Bay Area in 1986, when she moved to Lawrence to teach at the University of Kansas.

"Carolyn will be greatly missed," said novelist James Houston, who leads workshops at Squaw each summer. "She was personally engaged at every level of the writers conference. She always had insightful comments to make and great stories to tell."

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Of Ms. Doty's skill in matching writers to mentors, Houston said, "It was like choreography -- she was a fiction choreographer. She was very well attuned to what younger writers were trying to do. As a working novelist, she had a lot of heartful involvement with the task of writing, so she understood that very well."

Brett Hall Jones, director of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, said the organization will endow an annual fiction scholarship in Ms. Doty's honor.

Ms. Doty is survived by her mother, Dorothy, of Peoria, Ariz.; sister Janet of Tooele, Utah; husband Bill of Berkeley; son Stuart of Vallejo; and daughter Margaret of Oakland.

A memorial will be held at the University of Kansas on Monday. In the Bay Area, a memorial will be held at 2 p.m. on April 7 at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 the Alameda, Berkeley.

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